Redneck on Redneck

[ckramer]

Please comment on this

Rednecks: The Virtues Thereof

People from Massachusetts listen: you are "Damyanks and targets" and "Now, if an asteroid hit Boston, which would be a good idea"

[QC]

1. Sounds like the things said about rural poor people here everyday.

I guess it's not so funny when the target is people like us here at DU.

[ClassWarrior]

3. Prove it.

Link please.

NGU.

[Township75]

23. Here is a fresh one for you..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x105696#105741

[Hello_Kitty]

58. I agree some shitty things are said on this board

But I rarely see people actively calling for the physical harm or even the death of a particular group. When they do they are usually alerted on immediately. The frightening sentiment on the OP is all over the 'net and hate radio. It makes me scared of some of my own neighbors.

[Jade Fox]

4. Bullshit. I have never seen a post like that.

[QC]

7. You somehow missed all the jokes about trailers and incest?

All the business about how "Lincoln should have let those rednecks go"? Well, I certainly notice them, because I'm one of the people targeted by them. The scornful attitude toward "The Great Unwashed" that one finds here at DU is one of the most unappealing things about the site, and it has gotten much worse since the election.

[Jade Fox]

11. Yes I did miss them. Post a link.

Stupid things are said on this board all the time. I've always thought
classism is the one predjudice liberals allow themselves. and it does
show up on DU. By the way, my family is 100% rural poor previous to
my generation.

But I've never seen anyone here advocate mass killing of the rural poor,
which is what your original post implies.

[QC]

12. No, not "mass killing," per se.

But there have been plenty of posts about "rednecks" who "deserve what they get."

Do you remember the discussions about Thomas Hamill, that Mississippian working on Iraq who was kidnapped? There were literally hundreds of negative posts about him. They ranged from "he looks like a Freeper" to cracks about him being from Mississippi and "we all know what that means" to self-righteous denunciations of his "choice" of employers. What they all had in common was the notion that if he ended up getting beheaded, it was what he deserved.

It did nothing to calm these people when they learned that his dairy farm had gone under, he had no insurance, and his wife needed heart surgery, which is why he took the job in Iraq. No, they insisted, he could have come up with the money some other way. "I would never work for an evil corporation," they piously declaimed.

Well, that inability to comprehend necessity is one of the hallmarks of classism. People who have never been desperate literally do not know what they would do if, for example, given a choice between working for an "evil" employer or watching their spouses die for lack of medical care. But, of course, that doesn't stop them from preaching.

And no, I do not defend calls for mass killing. I simply found it amusing that it's generally considered OK here to attack "rednecks" but when one of them turns the tables, it's an outrage.

[Jade Fox]

16. No, I did not see the Thomas Hamill posts. They sound pretty bad...

but, again, stupid things are said on this board all the time. The over
all maturity level here is often not very high. The sort of posts you speak
of are made be those looking for a target for their anger. I realized
a couple years ago that I had to stop getting pissed off at every stupid
sexist comment or post on DU targeting right-wing women (that justifying
the sexism and mysogyny) and just focus on getting my own points
made on DU.

None of which justifies classism and anti-Southern bias--both very real.
I like to think I interupt those when I see them. I will certainly be more
aware in the future.

[JRob]

33. Cavalier and derogatory rhetoric about the "redneck" class of Americans...

accomplishes nothing. Although I reject the overall sentiment, there is "truth" in some of Fred's comments.

"rednecks" are not the problem, it's the people and politicians that manipulate them. These people are victims of circumstance.

We need to embrace their cause even if they do not recognize it. In the end, we all hope for the same basic things...

[MsTryska]

42. you msut have missed the backlash post-election too....

seems everybody that lived in a red state was backwards ass hick who only cares about gods and guns.


that's what i took away fromt he discussions at aleast.

[autorank]

65. You missed my thread too...attacking the back lash. It rocked.

...and rocked hard. It was around forever and had beau coup posts. Almost everyone agreed that the red-blue stuff was bull shit (which I think was in my subject line). We reminded folks of all sorts of things, including the fact that several red states were probably stolen (mine included).

Anti red stuff became unfashionable after that.

I don't see any reason to tar the vast majority of people here with anti red state feelings, when it's just a small minority, some of whom are 'temporary users' who love to sow discord.

I'm a red-blue united person all the way and I'm sure, positive, that the vast majority of DUers are as well.

:hi:

[MsTryska]

68. I probably did.....

i needed a break from the letdown and all the Kerry and red-state bashing, and soem time to recoup.


thanks for sticking up for us red-staters tho! :)

[Chemical Bill]

20. Fred doesn't know how I define redneck.

His crack about how I think anyone who can hang a door is a redneck is just wrong. I have a B.A. and can hang a door and fix my car. What does that make me?

I'm old enough to remember that redneck was used by longhairs to describe people with short hair who beat up the antiwar demonstrators. Just because Jeff Foxworthy has co opted the term doesn't mean that I think every redneck is rural and poor, or every southern person is a redneck. I think of redneck as somebody who drinks the kool-aid and votes against their own self interest. They would be beating up antiwar demonstrators if there were any.

This whole thing is just a way to keep the populace occupied in fighting each other so we don't go after the people who run the show.

Bill

[Career Prole]

2. Link has two "http:"'s in it. Needs edited.

It doesn't bother me. I don't care much for rednecks, either.
If they didn't bark back they wouldn't be so entertaining.

[jackster]

5. this redneck left Jesusland

a long time ago for Boston so she could live around people who actually used the gray matter inside their skulls!

[Clark2008]

14. There are plenty of people in "Jesusland" who use their

gray matter.
Heck, there are several on this board, present company included.

[jackster]

22. sorry, of course you are right....

however, the majority of the people in my hometown are more concerned with college football than with what's going on in this country. I do find that in Massachusetts at least there is much more tolerance and open discussion. People are more interested in becoming educated, formally and informally, than in keeping their heads stuck in the sand!

[bumblebee1]

28. jackster,

You could also add NASCAR to the concerns of the rednecks.

[ElectroPrincess]

35. I envy you ... and yes, many of these rednecks are willfully stupid ...

Their overt racism sickens me, i.e, confederate flag on every damn thing.

I was in WalMart (south of Fairfax in picky-up truck land) looking at the greeting cards when the middle aged lady next to me pointed toward the "Mahogany Collection" and said, "We only seem to have cards for the Blacks here."

DAMN! This is 2005 and racism is alive and well in Virginia ... the land of Senator Allen ... where many of the lawn jockeys' faces STAY painted black.

No, I have close to fifty relatives working in the farmlands of South Dakota. Many rednecks in Midwest are no better than the deep south because they choose to degrade the Sioux Indian.

When being a "redneck" has anything to do with the stars and bars OR putting down another working class (African Americans, Native Americans) of our County. Well, then in my not so humble opinion rednecks are just another clutch of arrogant a**holes. ;)

[ArkDem]

46. I can't believe you would go to a Wal Mart.

[ElectroPrincess]

50. There you go ... I was in a hurry and CVS was further :P

Hey, I do my best NOT to shop at a WalMart but they are *everywhere.*

Nope, I'm not ashamed for slipping to by a neighbor's daughter a "get well" card as soon as I heard that she broke her leg. I'm just weird that way.

I don't make it a habit but will I slip and go into WalMart again off-the-cuff? Probably yes.

Yes, I occasionally sin in that regard, but at least I don't pretend to be a *perfect* liberal. Yeah, I know all the arguments and I convey slight regret but WTF - IMO there's more to being social-justice conscious than NEVER EVER shopping at a WalMart.

[ckramer]

6. One thing really puzzles me is

why rednecks aren't democrats. I don't get it. It seems most of them are poor folks.

[QC]

8. Maybe because we call them "rednecks."

Heaping contempt on people is seldom a good way to get their votes.

[Tux]

10. True

And it is a cultural difference that most can't understand. I live in the South, raised in MI by parents who were raised in the South, and I still don't get it.

[chicagojoe]

17. Helping people realize that voting for

the Radical Right works against their best interest is part of Howard Deans' agenda in the run-up to 2006. I'm even guilty, on occasion, of ragging on rednecks. This is really in part because one side of my family IS a bunch of Freeper rednecks from the South, and they ACT like the monkeys that I believe them to be. These relatives of mine, with a few exceptions, are NOT the self-sufficient folks described in "Fred's" website. They are slackers of the first order, KKK sympathizers(possibly actual members;They lack the guts to admit it to me if they are), and they haven't gotten over the Civil War yet. I, on the other hand, could be defined as a "Northern urban redneck", as I am a blue-collar worker with a mere Bachelors degree.

Maybe it IS time to bury the hatchet with enough of the "thinking redncks" in order to bring about change in our nation.

[MsTryska]

43. they used to be democrats.

right up until reagan came around.

[smoogatz]

9. Funny how these anti-intellectual diatribes inevitably turn racist

"...some Diversity with a knife in its hand and an itch for his television or daughters, what would he do?" Rednecks in a nutshell. At least this guy got through a few paragraphs before revealing himself.

[QC]

13. "Rednecks in a nutshell."

And it's funny how other sorts of diatribes so often turn classist.

[smoogatz]

19. "Redneck" is not a classist slur.

Unless you consider racism one of the defining characteristics of the white working class. I don't.

[QC]

24. Do a little research on the history of the word and get back to me.

It is most assuredly a classist term.

[smoogatz]

25. There are most assuredly plenty of rich rednecks.

It's got nothing to do with class in its current usage. It's an attitude thing.

[QC]

27. OK, answer me this.

What sort of labor causes the back of people's necks to turn red? I can't recall the last lawyer, professor, or accountant I saw whose neck had been burned red and leathery. But my grandfather, who spent his days in the mines and his evenings and weekends in the fields (and was a staunch Democrat) had one of those red necks.

When we identify racism and other forms of stupidity with manual laborers, are we not making a classist statement? Geez, this isn't rocket science.

[smoogatz]

30. How many white people do you know of

who still pick cotton? Redneck meant "southern white farm laborer" in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Now it means something else. The meanings of words aren't cast in concrete, y'know. It isn't rocket science. Or are you saying there are no rich rednecks?

[QC]

36. My father picked cotton.

And he's still very much alive. And still a staunch Democrat, despite the best efforts of some to make people like him feel unwelcome in this party.

He grew up in a sort of poverty that few people now can even comprehend, and when he went to school in town, what do you suppose the town kids, the ones with shoes and nice clothes, called him? Yep, a redneck. And contrary to the assertions of the people in this thread defending class hatred, they didn't quiz him on his political or social views first. He was poor and country, and thus a redneck.

No, words aren't cast in stone, but they do have a lot of power to hurt. Your argument reminds me of young people who say that "That's so gay" has nothing to do with homosexuals. It means, they say, stupid and weak. But, of course, using the word "gay" in that way identifies stupidity and weakness with homosexuality. It's a prejudiced thing to say, even if the person mindlessly repeating it doesn't think so. Likewise, when we take a characteristic of the working class and identify it with stupidity, racism, and violence, we are making a statement about the working class, whether we are aware of it or not.

I can't help but wonder why you are so attached to a nasty term that offends so many working people that you would go to the mat to defend it. Perhaps you could enlighten me on that one.

[smoogatz]

39. Here's what the OED says:

"1.An uneducated working-class White in the southern US, esp. one holding reactionary political views; gen. anyone holding reactionary political views."

I'm not "defending" the word--I am interested in what words mean, though, and curious about your hyper-sensitivity to a word that always meant "white southern racist" to me. But what do I know--I'm just a hillbilly from southeast Ohio.

[QC]

40. Yes, notice the primary definition from your own source,

and you'll see why the word "redneck" is apt to cause misunderstandings. Besides, as I have now explained three times already, identifying negative qualities with a characteristic of a group of people is, obviously, an attack on those people. If I were to refer to a greedy acquaintance as a Jew and then insist that I didn't mean anything having to do with literal Jews, but was only using a figure of speech, then you would think--quite correctly--that I was a bigot.

As for my "hyper-sensitivity" to the issue, perhaps I don't like seeing people like my own family identified with everything that is wrong with the world. I would hardly consider that "hyper-sensitive."

And, of course, there's also the fact that I'm tired of losing elections. One of the most powerful pieces of propaganda that the GOP uses against us is the notion of the "liberal elitist," and redneck-bashing simply feeds that. It's stupid and counterproductive and does Rove's work for him. What's not to hate about that?

[Chemical Bill]

44. I'm sorry you are offended.

Personally, I don't use the word much unless I'm busting chops among friends. I don't mean to insult you and your family. I may agree that you might want to grow a thicker skin, but that doesn't mean that I want to insult you. I also think that when you talk about the people in town who have money and shoes, you are also painting with a broad brush. Us northern folk are as varied as the southern rural people are. When you say that Democrats have to stop insulting people by calling them rednecks, you are insulting those of us who never called your grandfather a redneck.

Bill

[QC]

52. Thanks, but it's not so much a matter of me taking personal offense

as it's a matter of how cluelessness about class is perhaps the main reason our party is out of power. What passes for a Left in this country is scarcely better on class issues than the Junior League, and that is one reason why we have lost so many working-class voters.

[smoogatz]

47. I see. Like Rove, you're saying the Democrats' problem is insensitivity

to white people's sense of themselves as an oppressed majority. And here I thought it was our rejection of FDR's economic populism. I thought that by accepting the "liberal elitist" label we were basically bending over for Rove. How naive I was.

My point in posting the OED definition, by the way, was that it appeared we were both right.

[QC]

51. That's a nice straw man you've got there!

Acting like Rove's stereotype of the "liberal elitist" validates the stereotype. That serves his interests but not ours. Still, though, a number of us seem determined to make the lie true, for reasons that are beyond me.

[smoogatz]

57. Oh for God's sake.

That's what, the third time you've tried to paint me as a Yankee liberal elitist? You don't think the Rove stereotype's a lie--it defines your thinking about class. Next you're going to tell me how we lost the election because those daggone Yankee intellectuals don't appreciate NASCAR. Give me a fucking break.

[QC]

59. Nope, I haven't tried to paint you as anything.

I definitely have my opinions, of course, but I'll continue to keep those to myself.

And no, I don't think the Rove stereotype is a lie. I think it has some elements of truth in it--that's the source of its power. Many, many posts here give daily evidence that some of us on the Left really do have some class issues, and that's what I'm talking about. And then, of course, there's things like our party's collaboration in "globalizing" people's jobs out of existence--if that doesn't make them think maybe we're not their friends then nothing else will.

Next you're going to tell me how we lost the election because those daggone Yankee intellectuals don't appreciate NASCAR.

Clearly you shouldn't give up your day job for that psychic gig just yet.

Give me a fucking break.

I will, as soon as you post something in good faith.

[GumboYaYa]

64. My whole family still picks cotton.

I was raised working in the fields from as early as I can remember. To me, redneck has always been a derogatory term.

[Chemical Bill]

32. Good thing unions gave him saturdays off.

Your grandfather didn't get much sun in the mines, I'll wager. I'm sure he was a nice man, but his job didn't contribute to the term redneck. Longhairs (well, freaks) who worked outdoors had white necks, you know.

Bill

[QC]

37. Yes, he was a United Mine Worker.

Got his head busted by company goons a few times. Served as secretary of his local. My dad remembers him sitting up late at night by the light of a coal oil lamp painstakingly filling out paperwork to send to national. He was a staunch Democrat--would sooner have died than vote for a Republican.

And yes, people in town, the ones who had a few bucks more than he did, called him and his kind rednecks. Much like today, I'm afraid.

[Chemical Bill]

29. How old are you?

And do you remember that the US in 1969 was divided into longhairs and straights, with rednecks being the straightest of the straights, and the most violence prone? The term redneck came from the lack of hair to keep the sun off of their necks, leaving the necks sunburned.

Bill

[smoogatz]

31. Not true.

It predates the 1960's by about a century. Nice try, though.

[Chemical Bill]

34. Sorry, I never used the term in the 1800s n/t

[QC]

38. American history didn't begin in the 60s,

despite the conviction of many aging hippies that it did.

"Redneck" goes back to the late 19th century. "White trash" goes back even further. Both terms were aimed at poor, rural whites.

[wallwriter]

15. Much of this is missing the point

Broad-brush prejdice, as many of these posters clearly understand, is offensive whether it is based on race, class, gender, or some other category. I grew up in a rural area, but I was raised to be an intellectual elite (elitist?). I have a healthy understanding of how ignorance and thoughtless conservatism can be by-products of unsophisticated rural people. At the same time, I have also encountered plenty of so-called "rednecks" who were liberal and open-minded, but just happened to be poor farmboys or girls.

You can find smart and thoughtful (though not necessarily educated) people in some very unlikely places. Of course, you can find idiots anywhere.

One of the key problems here is that when East (or West) Coast liberal snobs like us denigrate the rural poor, we are not simply being at least as prejudiced and hateful as the people we criticize, we are also missing out on a chance to take back some of our political powerbase.

When we fail to be open-minded, we lose the opportunity to spread the values of open-mindedness.

[Township75]

26. Let's see...

how many replies your post gets.

It cuts to the heart of the matter, and most people here on DU will likely be happier spreading hate of one class of people, in this case rural, than denouncing bigotry. Because of that, I don't see you getting a lot of responses.

It's good to see you didn't participate.

[Chemical Bill]

49. Wow, that's putrid...

when you say "most people here on DU will likely be happier spreading hate of one class of people, in this case rural, than denouncing bigotry." I am not naive enough to not notice the tension between some rural people and some urban people, but I think you are way over the top in saying that. It sounds like you are prejudiced against urban people, or is that left wingers?

When I go to the rural land my family has owned since 1944, I am aware that I didn't grow up there. Some people who live nearby treat me as if I have no business there. But some people are very welcoming. I don't generalize in that bigoted way that you seem happy to use.

I suspect that most people here at DU who insult rednecks are really talking about *'s supporters, no matter where they live or what they do for work. But I don't know all 70,000 members, so I can't speak for anyone but myself.

Bill

[RaleighNCDUer]

18. Astroid hit? The rednecks would be crying for their god to save

them, while the smart people would be putting society back together.

Check out Niven & Pournell "Lucifer's Hammer".

[smoogatz]

21. This guy should meet the English Department faculty here

One of our post-colonialists got three turkeys with one shot this year. Our creative non-fiction guy built his own lake cabin, and has ridden a motorcycle from Chicago to Labrador. Most of us hunt and fish. I'm sick of these stereotypes of intellectuals as wimps. It's bullshit.

[bvar22]

41. Rodney was right:

Can't we all just get along?

Unless we find the common ground, the Corporatists will keep us divided and conquered!
The ONLY way to WIN is to NOT play their game.
Dr. Dean knows this.

The Powers behind the Podium in the Democratic Party ARE Corporatists.

[MsTryska]

45. I can't believe y'all are taking this seriously....

when i first started reading this articel i was wondering what the hell he was talking about.


I've never heard a redneck be that country all the damn time. actually most rednecks i know would be syaing soemthign alogn the lines of "damn he's country..."



it was a tad bit over the top. then i read soem of his other stuff.....he appears to be one of those equal opportunity offenders trying to steal The Good Doctor's spot as Gonzo Journalist.


he's mildly amusing, and amkes a good point here or there, but he's not enough to get my panties in a bunch.

[XemaSab]

48. This dude's a crackup

He's a bloviating ass, but he's also making some solid points.

".....Only foreign correspondents should be permitted to run for president.

Reflect how we choose today’s candidates. They are either useless gigolos like John Kerry, or pampered drunks inflicted on the polity by Texas in revenge for the Civil War. If they are not unmitigated brats, they have worked their way up in politics. This means that they began as second-rate lawyers, attached themselves like ticks to some party or other, and spent thirty years learning to lie, steal, manipulate, and suck up. Politics is a sieve eliminating the honest. It assures that you get what you don’t want. When these moral flatworms are finally nominated for The Big One, they know crooked dealing. It’s all they know. How much sense does this make?

Now consider the veteran correspondent. He has spent three years each in, say, Buenos Aires, Teheran, and Singapore, and speaks a couple of the languages. He actually knows something about the world outside of the United States. A reporter spends his time learning about things, not in buying votes or grinning like a mental defective. The reporter’s instinct, though seldom that of the publisher, is to find the truth.

He knows the cities and governments of Asia, Africa, and Europe, the bars, villages, economies. He has seen wars at the level of ruptured adomens and probably isn’t enchanted by them the way some draft-dodging amateur from Houston might be. He knows the people of these countries, and knows that they are people, which seems never quite to penetrate to jejune occupants of the great double-wide on Pennsylvania Avenue."

and

"Liberalism is a feminine creed, embodying the kindness, short horizons, modest familiarity with reason, and placidity of the sex. It wants to buy people nice things without reflecting on how to pay for them. It believes in goodness but doesn’t often get much further, being benevolent while falling short of beneficence. As good mothers will, it tries to protect everyone from everything.

Conservatives by contrast believe that the individual has a God-given right to rob others. As the liberal has good intentions without rationality, the conservative has rationality without good intentions. He worships at the shrine of personal freedom, by which he means only his prerogative of making money regardless of damage done to others. He dislikes government as he dislikes anything that might inconvenience the pursuit of private rapine. He believes in the sanctity of private property, unless someone buys the lot next to his and builds a hog-rendering plant, when he will see the merits of zoning."

[ElectroPrincess]

53. Question: Does anyone pass muster in your world?

Your post is IMO so nasty and biased toward humanity not to mention democrats in particular.

I wonder if any "mere mortal" could measure up to such lofty standards? :(

Don't we all have our skeletons?

Unbelievable.

On edit: I just realized you were quoting the bigot author. The above tripe does NOT consist of any "good points." It only demonstrates the obvious: how the ruling class has always maintained control of us LITTLE PEOPLE.

Namely, divide and conquer.

[XemaSab]

54. I was quoting

the author of the same opinion piece in the OP.

His opinions are not mine.

Sorry if this confused you.

He's a cynical bastard, and I don't agree with everything he says by a longshot, but I'm finding his views... interesting.

[ElectroPrincess]

55. Yes, I clarified that above ...

If you grew up among Right Wing Rednecks (in the racist negative sense) you would cease to find his comments interesting. I've heard it all before and I find them divisive if not disgusting.

Same-O tactics = keep the masses fighting among themselves while the government coffers get raided.

[MsTryska]

56. are you serious?

you can't laugh at yourself?

[ieoeja]

60. Fred doesn't think very highly of Republicans.

1962-1980 (18 years)

I grew up on a farm in Indiana. We got electricity the year before I was born and indoor plumbing a couple years later.


1980-1981 (1 year; #1 worst time of my life)

I spent my freshman year in college attending Auburn University in Alabama. If I didn't know something they did, I was a stupid hillbilly. If they didn't know something I knew, I was a stupid hillbilly.


1981-1984 (3 years; #3 worst time of my life)

The next three years at Indiana University was almost as bad. What made it slightly improved was the lack of rancor. They may have looked down their noses at me, but they didn't seem to hate me. If my peers at Auburn didn't hate me, they did a damn good job of faking it.


1985-1987 (2 years; #2 worst time of my life)

I spent the next two years in the Chicago suburbs. It wasn't quite as bad as at Auburn, but it was close. Certainly worse than at IU. I didn't dress right. I didn't walk right (one who tries to walk gracefully across plowed fields ends up with face full of dirt). I was too loud, too coarse, etc. Aside from over a dozen moving violations (thank goodness Illinois has provisions for buying your way out of a ticket if you just show up for your court date) I never actually broke any laws, but the police and I got to know each other quite well. I was stopped the very first night because my car was a beater. On one occasion I was picked up for, well, walking along a road through a forest preserve. Nobody WALKS through a forest preserve at night don'cha know?


1987-present (18 years)

I moved into Chicago proper 18 years ago, and for the first time since leaving the farm, I didn't feel unwelcome. In Chicago, hillbilly is just one more ethnic group.


Why do I say "Fred doesn't think very highly of Republicans"?

Universities may be a wellspring of Liberalism, but it wasn't the Universities that made me feel unwelcomed. It was my fellow students. Specifically, it was usually the well to do WASPs. And the Chicago suburbs where I lived were upscale areas where Democrat was synonymous for "just passing through". The people who had a problem with my being a hillbilly were Republicans. And if you read Fred's article linked in the original post, you will see it peppered with references to the 'burbs rather than the cities.

But Fred probably thinks those suburbs are full of liberal Democrats. Those two years I lived in the Chicago surburbs I did a lot of complaining about Chicago when visiting the family. It wasn't until I moved into Chicago proper that I realized there was such a huge difference between city and suburb. And that (in generalities here) city and rural folks were more like each other than suburbanites were like either. To this day I cannot spend any appreciable time in most Chicago suburbs without attracting the attention of the police. And those where I never run into this sort of attitude are the rare democratically controlled 'burbs.

I have the advantage over my family in that I have gotten to experience all these worlds. Unfortunately, most of them would rather believe a complete stranger on the radio who tells them about Liberals in gated communities than their own relative who tries informing them that everyone he knows in a gated community is Republican.

[ckramer]

61. Fred also said

the poor are poor because they like it

What do you think?

[lynne]

62. By the tone of this thread -

- it's obvious that we're not courting the red-neck vote, huh???

Nah . . . we don't need 'em. We're doing just fine and dandy without them.

[ElectroPrincess]

63. Believe it or not, Rednecks are a somewhat diverse group of people

... no joke. Believe it or not some rednecks do NOT like NASCAR. I don't consider myself a redneck but I sure love my firearms handed down to me from my father and older brothers. If someone's invading your home, well, you just can't miss with a double barrel shotgun. :P

On Edit: Pic ... for a smile.

[lynne]

66. Hey, I'm with you 100% -

- as I was raised in redneck country and guess I'm considered one, too. I've done my share of hunting with my dad (and I'm female) and my 13 year old son just had the family "beginner shotgun" handed down to him for his birthday. It's been in the family since 1925 - handed down when the next male family member is between 11-13.

My point is that insulting a huge and diverse demographic of people is counter-productive. It sure doesn't "win friends and influence people" to insult and mock their way of life. And it sure won't endear them to the party if they find that they are the fodder of the Dem jokes.

[noiretextatique]

67. fred is full of shit

imho.